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I will actually be home this whole summer and will never deploy again so I am doing the stuff I had always wanted to do. I got a good garden going with plenty of cucumbers and want to make pickles. I love pickles!! I have never made them and have been reading up on the art and canning. Cold cure, hot cure, brine cure in a crock?

How do you make your pickles? Any recipes? Advice? Tips on canning them? Help me out.

No advice....just green with envy

If you like sweet and simple here's my notes on my grandmother's pickles, a favorite of us grandkids. The pickle also works well with beans, wax beans with some carrots added being my favorite. You may want to cut back on the onions a bit, seems to be a genetic predisposition to love onions. Best if left to sit in the jars a couple weeks before eating.

Follow the directions that come with the jar lids, important to not set the rings too tight and to not move the jars until cool.

Gramma�s Bread and Butter Pickles

23 � 30 medium cukes
8 large onions
2 large sweet peppers
� C salt
1 qt cider vinegar
2 C sugar
2 Tbsp mustard seed
2 tsp tumeric
2 tsp celery seed
1 qt water

Wash cukes and slice. Add salt to cukes and let them sit, then drain off the burps. Slice onions and peppers into a rational size. Combine vinegar, water, sugar and spices in a large kettle and bring to a boil. Add drained cukes and the rest. Heat thoroughly but do not boil, around 10 to 20 minutes. Pack while hot in sterilized jars and seal.

If it's dills that you are after, buy them from a store. I have yet to find a homemade one that was anywhere near crisp.

Good dill pickle recipe. Get some wide mouth quart jars and run them thru the dish washer, as well as the rings and lids. Then stuff the jars with dill and 4 to 5 garlic cloves and 3 to 4 small dried red peppers. Push the dill all the way in the bottom of jars. Then put cucumbers in jars and stuff as many in them as you can. Then in a large pot add 4 quarts water and 2 quarts apple cider vinegar and 2 cups pickling salt. Bring to a boil. Boil about 2 minutes and then pour into jars. Put lids on jars upside down so they don't seal. Then put rings on loosely. Let sit for 24 hours and then pour brine off and back into the pot and bring to a boil again. Repeat this 3 times. On the third time have seals and lids in a pot of boiling water. Once the brine comes to a boil the third time pour into jars again and wipe rims of jars with a clean cloth and put lids on right side down so they seal and put on rings. Let sit and the lids should start to seal down. Then let pickle for 5 to 6 months before opening.
These pickles are not super crisp and are a touch salty but they are our family favorite!!

I have to disagree on that one. Some commercial pickles are good but I have had some great home made ones!

Don't eat sweets. For dills I buy only one kind, Kruegermann Spicy Garlic. Fortunately they are available in Fredericksburg Texas and Ponderay Idaho both reasonably close to home. I buy them by the case as the boys tear 'em up. A wedge makes a nice martini or BM garnish too. Nothing close that I have ever had, both bought or homemade.

http://kruegermann.com/index.html

I've had lots of these and they are wonderful! Still have a couple jars in the cupboard.

You can substitute small cukes in this recipe, but DO make it as described below, too!

Pickled Green Tomatoes Recipe
Yield: 1 lb.
Total Time: 15 minutes
Serve these great pickled tomatoes as a side to grilled dishes or sandwiches.
Ingredients:
� about 1 pound small, green tomatoes (washed, stems removed. Quarter larger tomatoes.)
� one medium white or red onion, cut into strips
� one green pepper, cut into strips
� one dozen �baby� carrots or peeled carrot chunks
� 2 cloves garlic, minced
� chili flakes (optional for a little heat!)
� 2 quarts water
� 1 cup white vinegar
� 1/2 cup canning & pickling salt (can use sea salt or kosher salt, just make sure it fully dissolves)
� 2 teaspoons celery salt
� glass Mason-type jars for pickling
Directions:
1. In a large enough saucepan, add water, vinegar, kosher/sea salt and celery salt. Bring to a strong simmer, stirring until the salt has all dissolved.
2. Sterilize your glass jars by submerging them in a pot of boiling water. (Or run through dishwasher with heated dry cycle.)
3. Pack tomatoes plus some onion, pepper, carrots and garlic in each jar. Also add pepper flakes if desired. Add hot brine until the contents are completely covered.
4. Cover jars loosely with lids and rings. Allow the brine in the jars to cool, then tighten lids and put in fridge. You�ll want to wait a few days for the flavor to develop before eating.
5. The tomatoes can keep in the fridge for a few months, as long as no mold, scum, or spoiled odors develop. Check the jars regularly.

properly made, home produced pickles are just as crisp as anything done commercially.
Some tips for crispness include soaking in ice cold water first and using a shorter time in the hot pickling solution. A small quantity of alum is also useful in creating crispness.

I can't make them, so I can't help with a recipe, but I'll say homemade pickles are almost always better than store bought. We've got friends and neighbors that make pickles so good you wonder how companies can sell them in stores.

I don't have a recipe either but I did use to buy them from an old timer on the side of the road that his wife made and they were whole dills with some garlic and peppers in them but you had to open them the first time over a sink because they fizzed up like a bottle of champagne!

Here's one...

Before the days of canning and hot water baths, foods were preserved through brine curing or lacto-fermentation. Brined pickles are those that have been held in a salty solution anywhere from overnight to a number of weeks.
By covering such foods with a brine and keeping them in a moderately warm room, you can create ideal conditions for the lactic acid forming bacteria existing on the food surface to feed upon the sugar naturally present in the food. The lactic acid will continue to grow (or ferment) until enough has formed to kill any bacteria present that would otherwise cause the food to spoil. Lactic acid, which aids in digestion and helps to kill harmful bacteria in the digestive tract, gives the brine food a slightly acid, tangy flavor.
These pickles definitely do not taste like dill pickles that we are used to. However, though different, they taste good. I really enjoyed the saltiness coupled with the tang that was created and I was pleased that my dills were crunchy!
4-5 pickling cucumbers
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
2 tablespoons fresh dill, snipped
1 tablespoon sea salt
4 tablespoons whey
1 cup filtered water
Wash cucumbers well and place in a quart-sized jar, wide-mouth mason jar.
Combine remaining ingredients and pour over cucumbers, adding more water if necessary to cover the cucumbers. The top of the liquid should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar.
Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days to a week before transferring to cold storage.

Here's another...

Grammy Baker's Deli Dills.....never fail, nice and crispy! I've shared this before, but can't find it...here ya go

This is a cold pack Pickle Recipe! No processing, they seal themselves...

Brine: 1 qt water, 2 cups white vinegar. 1/4 cup sea salt...boil 5 minutes
Cut cukes however you please, sliced, spears, whole, soak in ice water bout an hour. Drain off water to pack. Don't use tap water, unless u have a well. Use purified water.
in sterile qt jars, 2 cloves garlic, 2 tbs dill seed, I also add a few sprigs of fresh dill weed, pack cukes tightly into jar, pour hot brine over cukes to 1/2 in of top of jar. Place sterilized lids on top and let set for about an hour, you will hear them pop....
If your in a hurry, and these are great, use this recipe, and just simply put your jar or covered bowl in the frig, they will be ready in a week....My son and his friends, beg for my pickles, Kyle ate two qts last fall, when he stayed overnight with my son, and asked for me to make more....told me they were the best pickles he ever had!...Enjoy the recipe! Lillian, Grammy Baker, was one of the most amazing gardeners and peserver's that I've ever been influenced by....

Mom put up pickles into her late 80's and always included a couple of grape leaves. Don't know if old wives tale, but supposed to make them crispier?

A lot of good info here, thanks guys. I like a spicy/hot pickle so I think I will stuff a pepper and some garlic into the jars to accomplish that. I am going to try every recipe here and report back.

My mom gave me a jar of pickles made like that. Her neighbor made them. They were very good!

It's not an old wives tale. Whenever I lacto ferment something I add a few grape leaves. They contain tannins which help keep the product crisp. The leaves I use come from Vitis riparia. I've read in books that you can use various oak species, but I'm not sure about that because I've never tried it. I think this fall I'm going to give it a shot with some sauerkraut. I'll use Quercus alba leaves because they shouldn't contain as many tannins as some of the other oak species that are common where I live. If you added too many, you'd be puckering pretty hard.

On a nerdy side note, Vitis vinifera is the basis for most wines. If it weren't for V riparia, V vinifera would have died out a while back. I don't remember the details, but I think it has to do with a root fungus. I had a friend from Spain who studied vinification work for me doing some research, and she freaked out when she saw it out in the woods. You'd think she saw bigfoot.